"It would literally take me less time to make you a big pile of sacks of corn or something than it took for you to explain that, for reference."

Kaneli blinks owlishly. He scratches his head, opens his mouth, closes it, and tries again.

"Well, then we'd be grateful to take a big pile of sacks of corn, and—dried trout, can you do that? At the landing at the base of the spire."

He points down over the side of the hut and hoots an instruction for some Rito milling around the bottom to clear out.

"You got it!" Big pile of sacks of corn. Big pile of bags of dried trout.

A few of the Rito down there are startled. Some people lean over the railing to look as word spreads in bird calls. Kaneli peers at the sacks, intrigued, before turning back.

"I thank you on behalf of the village," he says. "Again, if you need anything, our doors are always open*. Wind be with you—I pray that your quest goes well."

*A common wordplay slightly muddled in translation, about the fact that Rito architecture does not have doors.

"Thanks! What's the quickest way out of the downdraft?"

Down the stairs the way he came, over the bridges, and continue on the road. Left on the first fork and keep going until he sees a hill that goes down to the canyon, and he's safe to flap off from there.

"Thank you. Hopefully next time you hear from me it's all good news."

Off he goes.

The path is as described. The terrain gets rockier as he goes. He sees a few merchants and travelers on the road, but none after he splits left. No Rito—they must take another route for their hunting.

It's obvious when he finds the aforementioned takeoff point. After a distance the hill slope drops away into a deep canyon, maybe a mile or so wide and half again as deep. A way off to the south there's a bridge crossing.

It's a bit windy, but no downdraft if he tries to takeoff. The opposite, if anything.

Where to, now?

Both Akkala and Hateno are on the coast, but the former is at the very northern tip, which he'll need to route around the active volcano to get to. Or not, if he doesn't mind the heat. Hateno is past Kakariko Village in a mostly straight line. Neither is obviously much closer eyeballing the map. He can't see either location from here; there's mountains and stuff in the way. Or he could check out Kakariko Village anyway, or maybe he can investigate this spooky business around the castle?

He's happy to go straight over the volcano, it's not going to do him any harm. Maybe he'll need to swoop around it a little bit if it's actively smoking so he can see.

It's in a state of eruption, but it's more sprays of lava and basalt than smoke, and a whole damn lot of lava and pyroclastic flows spilling all over the mountain. He will probably be fine if he doesn't literally fly over the crater; airspace is big and he is small.

As he heads thataway, he passes over more gentle hills, lakes, and a large and dense forest run around by a river that seems to spill with mist, and eventually the rocky spires of Death Mountain. He also gets a closer look at Hyrule Castle on flyby. It sure is very ruined and garbed in a lot of spooky purple. Even at distance, he'll be able to see the flying specks of Skywatchers patrolling Castle airspace.

At some point he'll also find his first instance of how Kaneli described a Guardian Stalker: a bigger, bulkier and more-legged cousin of the thing that shot at Cam on Vah Medoh, its tapered head swivelling on a squat mechanical body as it lumbers about looking for prey. It's missing a leg but not apparently impaired for it. Ignore and move on, observe at safe distance, or approach?

How about "explode at safe distance".

It explodes! WOW that leaves a big crater. Wildlife is spooked.

He wasn't expecting it to explode that violently, wow! Good to know!

As keeps going, he'll pass over another stable that look like the one back at Rito Village. Even near the foot of the mountain, scattered people he sees don't seem to be terribly minded to evacuate to a safer distance. Flying over the volcano, he'll even find a few stray travelers appearing to be navigating surviving footpaths on foot? Inexplicably  aren't catching fire from standing next to open, live lava flows? Also he might see a few people made of rock, apparently a thing.

Also, uh, there's another giant magitechpunk automaton, this one patterned after maybe a salamander or lizard with a very low-poly head, crawling around the top of the volcano. It doesn't seem to mind splashing through the rivers of lava.

Apparently these people are... fire resistant. Hopefully the salamander is harmless, he doesn't want to kill it if it's not the killing people kind of magic robot.

It doesn't appear to be attacking anyone right now, just hanging out. If he keeps wide berth of it and the peak of the volcano, it will continue to ignore him.

He is actually going to get a bit closer to it to see if it's hostile, better him than somebody going for a walk.

It turns to look at him as he gets closer. When Cam gets within a certain distance, ports on its shoulder spiral open, and a swarm of spherical drones fly out. The big guy himself doesn't look particularly perturbed, but the swarm spreads out around it, patrolling the air and ground with red searchlights. Some of them are flying towards him.

Wow okay. He interpolates the drones. It can't have an infinite number of those, can it? He circles around for another provocation, maybe he can empty it out.

Now it looks perturbed. It scuttles around, producing more drones, but quickly it does, in fact, run out. The last few don't head out and seem to hover near the thing itself, scanning in all directions defensively. The big guy clambers to the top of the crater and... is... doing... something.

Its legs stiffen and its claws dig into the ground. Angry magenta light runs down the sides of the arches that make up its spine, its eyes glow brighter, and the luminous rings on his shoulders and neck slowly grind and begin to turn. The air feels like it's vibrating.

The lava in the crater—gushes. There comes a fountain eruption, then another, higher, the slag splashing and dripping off the giant mechanoid salamander. The rock base of the crater breaks and sinks as liquid level rises; lava slops over the edge of the caldera, joining the running rivers on the slopes, which are themselves surging with accelerated flows.

Oh for fucksake. He kills the salamander. Applies liquid nitrogen to lava until it's no longer endangering folks downslope.

How, specifically did he kill the salamander?

Interpolated it to smithereens.

there is a BIG ASS EXPLOSION

Good news: It is not proportionally big as the giant salamander is to previous magitech automatons he has blown up.

Bad news: It is, uh. Not only a heat-and-force explosion. Maybe. It's unclear. There's a blast of blue energy that rips outwards, ahead of the main fireball. In the split seconds before it hits Cam, it's decohered into more of a diffuse wave, but it still tingles as it passes. The shock of the main fireball rocks him, just with the wind and pressure. But a few seconds after the blast wave seems gone, the earth and air seems to shudder. A terrible roar—closer to the crashing roar of a spilling river than the roar of a monster, but not none like the roar of a monster—comes from the west.